Legendary Texas political writer Molly Ivins must be spinning — and heartily laughing — in her grave

In a context that doesn’t really matter for our purposes here, Congressman Steve Stockman, a wingnut if there ever was one, said this the other day:

Texans value speech, even if its speech they don’t agree with. From Molly Ivins to Louie Gohmert and every opinion in between, Texans value free and open political speech.

But one can’t help wondering how much Stockman valued the column in which Molly Ivins wrote:

That’s how we got Rep. Steve Stockman, our proudest contribution to the national Knot-Head Quotient, in the first place. Normal voters stayed home, the Christian right and its disciplined troops turned out in force, and whammo, we sent a hopeless dingbat off to Congress. I’m not saying that all candidates supported by the Christian right are hopeless dingbats: Stockman is special. For those of you who may have forgotten, Stockman is the glorious gun nut, militia supporter and Polluters’ Best Friend who is facing a complaint to the Federal Election Commission from the 1994 campaign and will almost surely draw another this time. In ’94, he took $80,000 from the Suarez Corp. of Ohio, which was out to get incumbent Jack Brooks. Stockman, according to The Beaumont Enterprise and the Houston Chronicle, lied on his resume in ’92 about being an accountant, lied about having worked for IBM, lied about being a graduate of the University of Houston-Clear Lake (he did later graduate) and lied about being a computer consultant at the school.